PS3 finds cure for cancer. World peace next.
by Ed Stasick 
{ Sep 20th 2006 at 12:30AM }
What happens when you link thousands of PS3s together in a vast neural network? If you guessed nuclear apocalypse and a world ruled by T-1000 Terminator robots, you'd probably be right. But, if you're one of those glass half-full kind of people, you might just help rid the world of some pretty serious diseases. Stanford University, through their @Home project, is launching an initiative that lets your PS3 crunch life-saving medical data when you are not too busy playing FantaVision on your shiny new "To participate, users will just download a program into the PS3's hard drive. Then they just need to leave the machine on when they're not playing. The Folding@home team will divide their complex calculations into manageable chunks and then send it to the participating machines."
Sony says that users will also be able to watch their PS3s solve the mysteries of the human genome right before their eyes. "These interfaces are very nice looking, very scientific in a certain way. ... You can use the controller and navigate around... That might make people more likely to download and run the program. All PS3s connect to the Internet, and Sony plans to make it easy for gamers to get the program when they go online."
I'm tempted to make a lame "so, Sony has an online strategy after all" joke, but this is very cool.
[Via CNN]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
the_pwnerer @ Sep 21st 2006 9:12AM
Ed Stasick,
Your jokes are terrible. They seem to fit perfectly on Xbox 360 fanboy. No wonder you write there too. Does Nick have no time to write anymore here?
SpeZek @ Sep 20th 2006 8:45AM
Well this is a great idea, except for the fact that when some people stop playing their PS3, they'll want to use their bandwidth on their computer.
Andir2.0 @ Sep 20th 2006 9:14AM
@SpeZek: The program would most likely download a small packet of information and process it for hours on end to try to find something then send it back. It's not going to eat your bandwidth. The data packets are usually very small and would transfer in a matter of milliseconds. You use more bandwidth refreshing this blog with all the ads than you would on protien folding. This is the way SETI@Home works and how the Folding@Home projects work. When your not using your PS3, it will go back to crunching numbers like it does best and you will most likely not even notice it transfer data.
Saying things like that is the way rumors start.
PS3 @ Sep 20th 2006 12:20PM
who really would you leave their PS3 on 24/7 just for this program
AKozlenok @ Sep 20th 2006 5:12PM
4: Plenty of people have omputers on (even farms of computers, including myself). I don't think that many people will have a problem with spending a miniscule amount extra to help humanity as a whole (and those that don't where assholes to begin with).
2: Yes 3 is right, the downlaods themselves are tiny, it's just the time it takes to crunch all the numbers that takes up the proccessor power (so bandiwdth doesn't get sucked, unless you consider a 500kb file once~three times a day, sucking bandwidth) ~_~.
Ed @ Sep 20th 2006 8:00PM
Wow, no fellow fanboys jumped into to defend the attacks on my humor. Ha! Oh well, we all know my jokes are comedy gold! But, seriously, pwner, your cold, black heart couldn't manage a single chuckle with all those Terminator references? Methinks that some fanboys don't like their favorite console taking any jabs.
ndoerr @ Sep 20th 2006 8:06PM
I'll be honest -- the Terminator references made me chuckle. Not because of Terminator, but... because I watched Robot Chicken on Sunday and Inspector Gadget was hacked by CyberDyne to kill Penny and Brain. One of my favorite kid shows parodied in such a fashion? Priceless.